L. H. C. Tippett

Who was L. H. C. Tippett?

Leonard Henry Caleb Tippett, known professionally as L. H. C. Tippett, was an English statistician.

Tippett was born in London but spent most of his early life in Cornwall and attended St Austell County Grammar School, where his contemporaries included the historian A. L. Rowse. Tippett graduated in physics in the early 1920s from Imperial College London. He studied for his Master of Science in statistics under Karl Pearson at the Galton Laboratory, University College London and R. A. Fisher at Rothamsted. He spent his entire career, 1925 to 1965, on the staff of the Shirley Institute, Manchester becoming in 1952 one of the first Assistant Directors. Along with R.A. Fisher and Emil Gumbel, he pioneered extreme value theory. The Fisher–Tippett distribution is named after him.

At the Shirley Institute he applied statistics to the problem of yarn breakage rates in weaving. In the late 1920s and 1930s he became known for his 'snap-reading' method of observation which lead to improved production efficiency and operative utilization. As a result of his work in the textile industry he was awarded the Shewart Medal of the American Society for Quality Control.